Images

AS08-13-2344 is perhaps the most well-known and most frequently reproduced orbital Hasselblad of Cauchy and the nearby Rima Cauchy and Rupes Cauchy. This extraordinary photograph was included on pages 616-617 of the article A Most Fantastic Voyage by Lt. Gen. Sam C. Phillips (The Story of Apollo 8's Rendez-Vous with the Moon; National Geographic, May 1969). Research: Danny Caes.

Maps

Description

Description: Elger

(IAU Directions) CAUCHY.--A bright little crater, not more than 7 or 8 miles in diameter, on the E. side of the Mare Tranquillitatis, N.W. of Taruntius. It has a peak on its E. rim considerably loftier than the rest of the wall, which is visible as a brilliant spot at sunrise long before the rest of the rampart is illuminated. On the S. there are two bright longitudinal ridges ranging from N.W. to S.E. These stand in the position where Neison draws two straight clefts. The Cauchy cleft, however, lies N. of these, and terminates, as shown by Schmidt, among the mountains N.W. of Taruntius. I have seen it thus on many occasions, and it is so represented in a drawing by M.W. Stuvaert (Dessins de la Lune). There is a number of minute craters and mounds standing on the S. side of this cleft, and many others in the vicinity.

Cauchy shows a curious clair-obscur effect at the shadow of its western rim, a couple of hours after local sunrise. The shadow looks "interrupted" at its central part. This "interruption" is caused by a curious wing-like formation at the crater's western rim. Two wing-like appendages run north-northwest and south-southwest (radiating out of the crater's western rim). A similar formation is noticeable at crater Kies A in the southwestern part of Mare Nubium. Observations and research: Danny Caes.

Nomenclature

Named for Augustin Louis Cauchy (August 21, 1789 – May 23, 1857), a French mathematician. He started the project of formulating and proving the theorems of calculus in a rigorous manner and was thus an early pioneer of analysis.

On LTO-61B4 (prepared in November 1973) the DMA erroneously introduced the name Noether for the satellite featureCauchy D. The name Noether (spelled there "Nöther (or Nöter)") had actually been previously approved by the IAU for an unrelated farside crater, and had been published in Menzel, 1971. Hence the use of Noether as a replacement for Cauchy D appears in Ewen Whitaker's list of Invalid Names.

Hussein (Cauchy A) is one of the few LTO-related "new" crater-names which are located at the moon's Near Side. Most of those names are located at the moon's eastern limb (near Mare Smythii), and at the moon's Far Side. - DannyCaesMar 29, 2008

Cauchy D hills (a nickname from D.Caes for the cluster of hills north-northeast of the bowl-shaped crater Cauchy D, at the western part of Sinus Concordiae) (these hills seem to be sections of an ancient crater, see SLC-A4) (System of Lunar Craters).